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del.icio.us Digg It!  new Last update - 02:06 28/12/2007 A scavenger's life By Doron Halutz Tags: Consumerism Dana, 21, a waiter in Tel Aviv, spends more money on dog food than on her own food. She buys high-quality commercial pet food for her dog, but the bread and vegetables that Dana, a vegetarian, uses to prepare her own meals come from garbage cans. "Once, I calculated that I spend NIS 100-150 a month on food, and 80 percent of that goes for soy milk," she says. "A large bag of dog food costs NIS 300." There is no need, however, to pass the hat for Dana, as she does not go hungry and is not in financial distress. Her love affair with trash bins is an ideological anti-consumerism choice that is shared by many of her social activist friends in Tel Aviv. Advertisement "We hate money and this is our alternative," explains T., a 20-year-old musician. "In this way, we survive without any connection to the consumer culture. We have no need for supermarkets." Dumpster diving is the buzz phrase for collecting leftover food, from loaves of bread left outside the doorways of bakeries at the end of the day to poking around in trash cans - and for more than just food. "Ninety percent of my clothes are from the garbage," says T. Dana is also proud of the "dumpster dog" label that has been attached to her dog, which she found abandoned in the street. Truth be told, every scavenger has his collection of stories about the "treasures" he has found in the bountiful dumpsters. "I check the dumpsters in every city I visit," says T. "In the municipal market in Krakow, we found three bags full of wild raspberries. We made enough jam from them to last our whole trip." "Like a writer who collects the world through stories and a photographer who searches for photo-ops, we look for garbage cans," says A., a 23-year-old art student. "Next to a dumpster in Amsterdam I found a load of paint brushes. I also found the easel I use in the garbage. It had a few bird droppings on it, but I cleaned them off and now it's a great easel. Once, when we were walking around in Switzerland, we opened a dumpster and found dozens of boxes of different kinds of breakfast cereal and muesli." Why were they thrown away? "Either the boxes were damaged or their sell-by date had passed, or maybe the store got a new shipment and simply discarded the old stock. Things get thrown out to keep pace with manufacturing." Part-time temporary jobs It is easy to view these dumpster divers as peculiar young people driven crazy by boredom, but not only do most of them come from normal backgrounds (A. grew up on a kibbutz and did national civilian service; Dana was born in Greece and has lived in several countries, following her father's job assignments with the Jewish National Fund; T. grew up in the Pardes Hannah region), they are also quite articulate and know how to explain exactly what bothers them about "the system." Their ongoing preoccupation with the contents of dumpsters, they explain, is intended to establish a lifestyle that involves as little contact as possible with the capitalist economy and the manufacturing-for-profit mechanism that feeds it. "This basically means choosing a simple life," says T. For this reason, they also work only at temporary, part-time jobs. Dana waits tables and cleans ("Three days a week, and only a few months a year); A. is helping with an educational project and T. cooks for a natural food catering service. "This is my day-to-day war against the world," he says. This quest also includes the search for alternative housing arrangements. For two years, A. and T. lived in an abandoned building in South Tel Aviv, until they were forced out by the authorities. Last summer, Dana lived in an abandoned building in Amsterdam (she divides her time between Israel and Holland, where her mother lives). In Israel, she lived in a spacious house in the Shapira neighborhood in south Tel Aviv, along with five roommates. They pay minimal rent because they renovated the building themselves. They admit that alongside their ideology, an adventurous spirit is part of their attraction to garbage. "It's a bag full of surprises. You never know what you will find inside," says T. For this reason, gastrointestinal ills are no more than an occupational hazard. "Once," recalls Dana, "I ate a marshmallow fluff cookie that made me throw up for two days. Even when you buy things in the supermarket you can't tell if they've been defrosted and refrozen 70 times and whether they'll upset your stomach." "We always wash and sort the fruits and vegetables," says T., "and cut away any rotten parts. I also have my limits - I won't eat something that looks disgusting. I also won't thrust my arm into a garbage can full of dirty paper and cigarette ash to get at a loaf of bread." More garbage in Savyon "Western society considers garbage disgusting," says American journalist Heather Rogers, 37, "so it is important for dumpster activists to show that there is a different way of looking at garbage, that things do not have to be bought in stores." Two years ago Rogers, a scavenger herself (though not a diehard), turned her love of garbage into a book, "Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage" (published by The New Press). In the book, she examines what goes on behind the scenes in the U.S. garbage and recycling industry, using the information as a window onto capitalism and the relationship between it and the quality of the environment, government and power of work. "The fact that there is so much trash in the world has to do with the economic system, which is based on growth," says Rogers. "In order to create economic growth, there must be ongoing consumption, which goes hand in hand with increasing waste. This is good for business, but the question is how good it is for the environment and humanity in the long term. Excessive consumption and the garbage it generates are polluting the environment, contributing to global warming and increasing the pressure on natural resources in developing countries." Rogers found that Americans produce an average of 2 kilograms of garbage per person per day. In Israel, this figure is 1.6 kilos, according to data collated by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Surplus refuse is a clear characteristic of a society of abundance, says Rogers, since "rich countries consume more and therefore also produce more garbage." Evidence of the connection between a region's economic situation and the quantities of garbage produced can also be found in a comparison between various communities in Israel. Savyon, for example, tops the list of garbage producing neighborhoods, with 5.1 kilos of refuse per person per day, while poor neighborhoods, mostly with Muslim populations, such as Rahat, are at the bottom with just 0.4-0.6 kilos of trash per person per day. Tel Aviv is relatively high on the list of garbage-producing cities, with an average of 2.5 kilos per person per day, but dumpster divers do not need the CBS to know that. A., T., and Dana began scavenging gradually; it became part of their routine when they moved to Tel Aviv. "At age 16, I would travel from the kibbutz to the city," recalls A. "I preferred spending my money on bus fare and ate things left by others. At 18, I moved to Tel Aviv, and the markets there have everything you could need. This is a lifestyle whose motto is 'living for free,' but it's not because I have no energy to work or am lazy. Though that, too, is legitimate, because the work cycle is exploitative." "I have always done that," says Dana. "I have regular places where I go, and if I come home at night and walk past a bakery, I simply open the dumpster beside it and find enough bread for six people for a month. More businesses have become aware of this and many leave [edible refuse] outside their establishments, instead of in the dumpster. That's really nice." Alongside the nice businesses, there are others that make every effort to foil the scavengers. "Sometimes store owners throw things at me," says A. "In Europe, food stores protect themselves from dumpster divers, so that they won't make a mess, and either lock away or hide their garbage cans." Leaving things for the homeless It is hard to remain unmoved by the sight of youngsters fishing through garbage in search of food, but some people do more than just glare. "There are people who see a girl collecting [garbage] and think that makes her fair game. They shout at me or even try to touch me," says A. "Some older adults think there is something [about scavenging] that demeans them," adds Dana, "and they say, 'When I was your age there was no food at all. So why are you searching through garbage when there is food to buy?'" Does it not bother you that you are competing over leftovers with the homeless and migrant workers, who probably cannot afford to buy? "Sometimes, while scavenging, we meet people who really have nothing, and then we leave for them. It is a weird feeling to search through garbage. You look, and everything is slimy, rotten or wormy. Then suddenly you see an 80-year-old woman doing the same as you. We are both there out of need, but I know that we are in different situations, because I have the option of buying." Doesn't wallowing in garbage disgust you? "All it is is a few rotten vegetables," says A. "Garbage cans do not conjure negative associations for me. Ever since I was small I've been called 'garbage girl.' I worked in cleaning from a young age and am not afraid of filth. 'Dirty' is what society defines as such." Weren't your parents appalled when they heard you were eating trash? "At first my mother made a face," says Dana, "but then she understood that you can live a good and satisfying life with very little money. When she visited me in Israel she even came with me once." "My parents went through several stages of accepting [my lifestyle]," says A. "They give me credit for the possibility that there is some truth in what I am doing, for my lack of reliance on the economic system." If you received a million dollars tomorrow, wouldn't you prefer the convenience of consumerism? "We are already accustomed to this lifestyle," says Dana. "I would not suddenly move to a quiet apartment in an upscale neighborhood." Bookmark to del.icio.us Santa's helpers Foreign workers hope for citizenship for Christmas. 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